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08.02.2006 e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 7 Issues / To does  No national campaign  Do we need one? Should it be European or national?  Can existing organisations pick up?  How can we maintain non-partisan character of the issue?  Digital pen adds new quality  Technology requires research  Security needs to be analysed  Paper trail verification issues need to be understood  Available knowledge on recounts need to be applied to German electoral system  Lack of awareness  Many Politicians and Journalists still unaware of e-Voting and related issues  Vendors still gets away with aim to provide the modern approach to elections  Discussion needs to leave the IT corner  Efficiency of electoral systems?  Does participation require more complex electoral systems and more frequent polls?  Might/will drive purchase of e-Voting technology

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08.02.2006 e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 9 Germany: Election Organisation  Election Organisation  National Electoral Act and Electoral Code provide framework  National elections are supervised by Ministry of Interior  Execution is with municipalities  Costs are refunded to municipalities by a lump sum per voter  Use of technology  Ministry of Interior is regulator (authorisation)  Municipalities are free in decision if and what to use within regulatory framework  Voter registration  Law enforces that citizens register their residence with the municipality  Voter register is prepared by municipality from residence register  No requirement for voters to enrol in register  No central registers for residence or voters on federal or state level  Process is relatively incident free

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08.02.2006 e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 10 Germany: Electoral System  National Parliament  2 votes: One for regional candidate, one for party in federal state  Parliaments of Federal States  Typically 2 votes (candidate and party) or just one vote (party)  Regional Elections  County, Municipality, (Major)  System varies from state to state  Often similar systems to national level  Some states have complex electoral systems  E.g. Frankfurt: One vote for each seat (85) in the Council  Absentee voting  Via mail on request

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08.02.2006 e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 11 Germany: Remote e-voting  Late 1990‘s  Significant effort in research, projects W.I.E.N, VoteRemote  05/2002:  Minister of the Interior announces remote e-Voting for 2006 or 2010  10/2002  Parliament discusses remote e-Voting: supported by all 5 parties  Perception that Germany is “behind”  New channel in addition to ballot office and mail  Hope that higher turnout can be achieved using internet voting  Debate is focussed on if internet voting should be used to vote more often (supported by Labour and Greens, opposed by Conservatives)  Since 2004  Ministry of Interior considers internet voting to be appropriate for non- political elections only  Main concern is that secrecy of the vote can not be enforced

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08.02.2006 e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 14 2005 Election Scrutiny  Bundestag election, September 19 th, 2005  Four e-Voting related complaints filed with scrutiny committee of the parliament  Federal Ministry of the Interior replied in May 2006:  No evidence of tampering, threads are hypothetical”  Elections are still transparent and verifiable using Nedaps  Nedaps can not be hacked because source code is private  Manipulation is pointless because Nedaps are configured just before election and hackers can’t know which party is on which button  Election integrity is ensured by procedural framework  Bundestag rejected complaints on December 14 th, 2006  Mainly follows arguments of Ministry of the Interior  Next step is Constitutional Court  To be filed by 14/02/2007

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08.02.2006 e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 15 Legal framework  Transparency and verifiability is substantial part of legal framework, but not repeated in context of e-Voting